Samsung Mobilers Winners : A Disappointment!

We must appreciate that Navin Bajaj has the grace and poise to congratulate all winners on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 blog contest even while seething with rage and disappointment at what he perceives as bad judgement!

I really must tell you Navin that I have been writing (and have participated in quite a few contests too) since I was in school in the seventies... and this is just one of the few prizes I have won. You don't win everytime... but that surely does not mean that you STOP writing or associating with people or a website or a forum. Winners are chosen because of what the judges/sponsors want... and not every form of writing appeals. Yes, there can always be wrong judgements, but then that is a part of life. Move on... keep surging... winning will embrace you when it must!

No point in all this dude, it's all decided by samsung people.

Forgot to mention that RULES OF THIS CONTEST WERE CHANGED MID WAY to accomodate those people who did not even host the LIVE launch event of this Tab.  WHY WERE THE RULES CHANGED MID WAY? How many out of this winners' list are those who DID NOT EVEN HOST THE LIVE EVENT ON THEIR BLOG SITES? Any answers?

No weightage has been given for ORIGINALITY also. Many of the winners are LATE COMERS in this contest who have JUST COPY PASTED (with minor edits) the ideas posted by those who posted earlier. 

@Pramod : If Samsung has decided the winners then they have obviously shown undue favoritism to some people, who were perhaps their friends?

@Arvind Passey : I congratulate you again for being among the winners, but I also have to say that your entry was CERTAINLY NOT DESERVING TO BE AMONG THE WINNERS.  I have seen your entry. It is overly lengthy, off topic and irrelevant. The reader loses interest in your post from the first paragraph itself. I don't know how many people would have the patience to read your full RAMAYANA right till the end, which has ZERO RELEVANCE to the Samsung Galaxy tab. If some non-partisan people with better judgment had judged this contest, then your entry would possibly be among the BOTTOM 20 of all the contestants.  Sorry for being so candid.

@The owners of Indiblogger : I will certainly not participate in any contest on this site ever!

I am winner,de jure, because i got to use SAMSUNG TAB for 3 hours and i posted the first live video of the event from the venue of the meet. Congrats to all defacto winners, and Navin Bajaj let us be sportive and acknowledge the judgement of judges.

@Subhashchy : Firstly, you need to go to my blog site : http://superstargems.blogspot.com to get to know what it's all about, then you will get your answer to why exactly I blog. I give Stock Tips (for free) to my readers/followers who are investors from across the globe...... Number of visitors to my site being in lakhs. I do this for charity.

Secondly, would anybody (in his/her right mind) blog about a commercial product like the Samsung Galaxy Tab on their sites just because "blogging is their passion"? If blogging is your passion then you would blog about the subjects you are passionate about. I bet nobody would blog about a "Samsung Product" which will influence their sales, just out of passion. It would be like advertising for a commercial product on your site for free!  ....... So, of course, I blogged about a Samsung product with an intent to win the contest, not coz I am in love with Samsung, for Pete's sake!    I actually feel cheated by Samsung and Indiblogger.in because I telecast their product launch LIVE and promoted their product through my post FOR FREE! Both Samsung and Indiblogger.in derived mileage from my website for more than a month FOR FREE! If they had paid for advertising their product on my website for so long, they would have had to pay me much more than the price of their Galaxy Tab 750!  So, I'm absolutely in the right for being disappointed with their poor/partisan judgment of this contest. I feel cheated. Period.

To prove my point that the judgment was indeed poor/partisan and I'm not whining just coz my name is not in the winners' list, I challenge everyone on indiblogger and the judges who judged this contest to compare my entry with that of Mr. Arvind Passey's entry. You can see for yourself whose entry is more relevant and has more impact. 

And thirdly, there are still no answers to my question, "why were the rules of the contest changed mid-way?" from the Organisors/Judges of this contest. How many of the winners on the list are the ones who did not even host the LIVE Launch event of Samsung?

@Umesh : I cannot be supportive or acknowledge the judgement of the judges simply because their judgment is so obviously poor/partisan.

Agree one hundred percent with you, Sorcerer. It's time members of Indiblogger wake up! These contests are nothing but a sham! My advice to all the bloggers is : DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN SUCH CONTESTS. DO NOT PROMOTE ANY PRODUCT ON YOUR BLOG SITE FOR FREE. Indiblogger.in and their advertisers like Samsung are only EXPLOITING YOU to promote their products for free!  Realize the value of your words and your webspace! 

I feel cheated by Indiblogger.in and Samsung because I naively promoted their product on my popular website for more than a month, and in return what did I get?...... Nothing! Zero! Zilch! If you convert the mileage both Samsung and Indiblogger.in got out of my site for more than a month, then the amount they owe me would be around Rs. 1.5 lakh!

Shame on you, Indiblogger.in and Samsung!

Now, just you wait Samsung & Indiblogger! I'm gonna expose both of you to the same audience that I naively promoted you to.  You think you can cheat people like this? .......

Naah! You got it wrong. This cheating game of yours is not gonna last long. It is actually going to prove counter productive for you.  Now wait for the NEGATIVE PUBLICITY that you are going to get! This will teach you a lesson to be MORE HONEST in future! Bye Bye!

Well, with 220 entries and 20 winners, this had to happen. 200 people had to lose, some of whom knew they will not win, some confident enough that they will own a Galaxy Tab by the end of all this. Some hoped they would and were not disappointed when they didn't win, and some wanted to win badly and were therefore disappointed badly enough to express that on this forum.

Arvind Passey's post was a very interesting and creative one, and though I must admit I skipped over a few paragraphs towards the end, it was a very good read. Must have taken quite some time and effort in concenptualizing the story and writing that down.

Navin's, on the other hand, is a 300-word affair that could have well been a Facebook status update. 

Reading his anguish and disappointment had made me he had written something very good. What I did not know (before digging up his deleted post from Google's cache) was, he expected Samsung to give him a tab just because he wrote "Samsung Galaxy Tab is good". Did any the remaining 219 bloggers who submitted their entries differ?

Anyway, here is some free publicity for Navin, his cached blog that was deleted: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CKdqJ7xvk8EJ:superstargems.blogspot.com/2011/08/samsung-galaxy-tab-750-topples-apple.html+samsung-galaxy-tab-750-topples-apple.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in.

In case Google permanently deletes that, here is his complete post:

I also posted with lot of images and content including promotion of their launch video. I am also disappointed with the final verdict. We have to accept it.

It seems that they have selected winners based on some random number system.

Samsung should ship few goodies like T-Shirts and Pens as minor gift for promoting their tab for all 200 bloggers. I spent nearly 1 full day to write content. So I expect something.

@Arvind: I checked your entry and it looks nice. Congrats and best of luck

@Navin - Continue blogging. 200 bloggers are disappointed. So you should not feel alone. I hope you can win next time.

I read all the posts in this thread and the other thread posted by The sorcerer. I just wanted to leave it at that. But then I decided, let me put my point out anyway.

Couple of very different opinions is getting muddled in this thread. One is by Navin and the other by Sorcerer. 

Navin Bajaj's rant is uncalled for. And especially picking an individual and questioning his entry is pretty cheap.

But Sorcerer has some very valid points. The most valid one being that Samsung is selecting 20 official mobilers. So the guys should be the hardcore techie guys like the ones sorcerer talks about. But even the tech posts in this contest were just a regurgitation of the specs. It didn't look like they were the tech writers that sorcerer talks about.

Personally for me, the contest looked like a PR exercise (or as a paid advertisement). And if we think of it that way, the contest was very fair. 20 winners in 220 participants is almost 10%. winners. That's damn good if you ask me.

And I went through the winner's posts. They were good. I also felt disappointed that I didn't win. But I wouldn't say the winning posts were bad. And all the participants knew that only one out of evrey ten participants is going to win. So where's the problem?

Well said, sairam ji, 

Well Navin, Even I have been disappointed in the past especially in the HP color contest where I thought my entry was way better than some of the winning entries...
But one must learn to take these things in the stride and push for betterment of oneself...
I have still not won a thing here and have been left heart broken all times... I will participate in the future as I never believe in giving up!!!
Congrats all the Winners, enjoy your Tab:):)

I'm hungry....

Speaking Truly, I won't mind losing a fair competition. This one wasn't fair, that's what is pinching me. I put in a lot of effort in writing that post about 6 hours.

I didn't expect to win because I had already seen a lack of good decision making in the intel app up contest.

I am sorry to say but I don't really like the judgement of Indiblogger people.

I have found the reason why so many poor entries were chosen over well wriiten entried.

Indiblogger guys have looked at the comments to read the review of other people. The people with maximum number of comments have won, not the ones who have written good articles.

Indiblogger guys have saved time, they have just looked at the number of comments, "hmm... this guy has engadged an audience, so many comments, I bet his article is nice, give him the prize, nice job done son, you have promoted the product well, what if your article is less creative, less original, less techie than others, you have promoted us well, brought a good audience to our sponsors, well done..! son, well done..!! here's the tab you wanted."

So next time, get tens of thousands of comments, i bet you would never lose a contest.

Cheers,

Rakesh Narang

Beauty lies in the eyes of beholder so those who judged the entries (and there were many) must have had some criteria..Everyone who entered the contest wanted to win and felt bad on losing(I surely did) but there can be only  few winners..Better luck next time..don't give up as they say kabhi tu milegi..kabhi tu milegi manzil raahi!!

I randomly checked an entry

http://zomgitscj.com/2011/08/11/hands-on-with-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1/

The blogger has not featured the launch video as it was one of the requirements. But still he got the prize.

I posted an entry with the video but never won.

I am not against this blogger but just want to highlight the professional ethics behind this contest.

Hi Sorcerer!

Friends and fellow bloggers are always free to ask me anything... my email id is [email protected]